4 Steps To: Increase Your IQ

IQ tests have changed drastically over the years. What used to be a simple formula that divided your mental age by your chronological age (and multiplied it by 100) has been replaced, at least for adults, by calculations on a bell curve.

This aside, plenty of criticism and controversy surrounds the Intelligence Quotient, but for our purposes we will ignore the relative merits of the test itself. Rather, we’ll focus on how to increase your IQ with regard to the kinds of thinking it measures.

Although there is no single standard IQ test to measure smartness, they are all composed according to the same criteria, featuring a number of subtests — half of which measure one’s verbal IQ and the other half of which measure performance IQ. Thus, in the following steps, we’ll use the abbreviated format of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) as a guide, which uses only four of the normal 14 subtests: Vocabulary, Similarities, Block Design, and Matrix Reasoning. Note: In trying to increase your IQ, it is likely you will find the first two steps (verbal) far easier than the last two (performance) if you are left-brained, and vice versa. If this is the case, you will benefit from applying greater effort toward understanding the sections you've struggled in, as opposed to honing the sections you've already grasped.

step 1

Describe different words aloud

The Vocabulary subtest measures “the degree to which one has learned, been able to comprehend and verbally express vocabulary.” In short, it seeks to measure your ability to express yourself in terms of the accuracy and economy of your expressive vocabulary. Since this is largely based on prior knowledge and experience, it is said to measure your crystallized intelligence.

To increase your IQ, draw words from a dictionary and describe them as though you were speaking to someone with a reasonable amount of knowledge about the world, but very little understanding of it. For example, if you land on the word “clarinet,” a poor description would be “musical instrument” since this answer presupposes far too much. Rather, you might say “a clarinet is a hollow handheld device powered by the lungs. By blowing into one end, we can produce a variety of sounds. Holes in the device allow us to modulate that sound into music.”

This answer may be too wordy, but it serves as a reasonable example of how you should approach each word.

step 2

Extract ideas from objects

The Similarities subtest measures “abstract verbal reasoning,” meaning that it tests your ability to form and express concepts. It typically involves trying to identify a pattern within three or more objects and then deciding among a selection of objects that most appropriately follows that pattern.

To increase your IQ, pick 10 objects: DVD, cup, pillow, book, and so on. For each one, begin verbally describing it in as much detail as you can, and work outward until you’ve stripped it down to an idea. For example:

My DVD copy of the first season of The Facts of Life is on the floor in front of the DVD player

My DVD copy of the first season of The Facts of Life

The DVD of the first season of The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life

A TV sitcom

Entertainment

Abstract thought is crucial to being able to connect seemingly disparate things and to draw wider conclusions about them. Without the capacity to sum up certain things in an abstract manner, you lack the power of inference and deductive reasoning.